Bird by Bird: The Entryway.

Our entryway is in need of a little rehab - from what's on the walls to what's on the floor and everything in between. So in the spirit of taking things Bird by Bird, the hubs and I decided to start by getting started on the walls. We have a bunch of fun prints and paintings, plus a few empty frames, so we thought it would be fun to start a gallery wall.

We started by pulling out all of the frames and prints we wanted to use and arranged them how we'd like to see them on the wall. The rug in our den was just about the size of the wall, so it was the perfect staging ground for our gallery. (And since the little guy was napping, we were able to have things on the ground without worrying about him getting into everything. That part is key.)

After we had a nice arrangement, we traced and cut out paper grocery bags in the sizes and shapes of each of the frames so we could tape them onto the wall to see how things looked before committing with nails. We're all about the 'measure twice, cut once' way of working, so we knew we would take the time to make sure everything fit perfectly. And by "perfectly" I mean "as close as possible without making ourselves crazy."

It was a good thing we used this method too, since our initial measurements were slightly off and we had to do a little shuffle to get the paper frames to fit in the space. Oops! And whew.

In order to be sure the frames would hang in the right place, the hubs used this nailing method from Young House Love - and it worked like a charm. We also followed their advice and started taping in the center and working our way out from there.

The fun part started as soon as the first print went up on the wall...but that didn't happen until later that night since the little guy decided to wake up from his nap early and we had to abandon the project until after his bedtime.

Since we had all the measurements done and paper templates up on the wall, the nailing and adding the pictures to the wall went really quickly and we were left with this...

Maybe I'll get some shots during daylight, but it definitely looks better than an empty wall. (You can see that we still have a few frames to fill, so I'm on the lookout for some fun, colorful prints to add into the gallery.) We even talked about the possibility of adding more to the gallery and wrapping it around the wall to the left as well.

The entryway is definitely a Bird by Bird project - we still need to figure out how to use the space we have at the top of the stairs. I know we'll need some place to hang coats and bags (there's a coat closet nearby, but sometimes it's nice to just come in and hang stuff on a hook); a place to store shoes; a little table to drop keys, wallets, phones, sunglasses, etc.; and perhaps a little bench or chair to sit and put on shoes. Stay tuned for how we finish up the entryway rehab.

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